


Amor vincit omnia

by Duchessa712



Category: Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice (1995), Pride and Prejudice (2005), Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Best Friends, Broken Engagement, Brother-Sister Relationships, Engagement, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Female Friendship, Friendship, Healthy Relationships, Lost Love, Male-Female Friendship, Modern Era, Past Rape/Non-con, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sister-Sister Relationship, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:22:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28632438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duchessa712/pseuds/Duchessa712
Summary: Five years ago Elizabeth and William were organizing a wedding that would never happened.Five years later they meet again under terrible circumstances."Georgiana Darcy".And Elizabeth sees her, a girl of twenty years laying in a hospital bed fighting for her life. Or soccumbing to oblivion.
Relationships: Catherine Bennet & Elizabeth Bennet & Jane Bennet & Lydia Bennet & Mary Bennet, Catherine Bennet & Georgiana Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet & Georgiana Darcy, Elizabeth Bennet & Jane Bennet, Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy, Fitzwilliam Darcy & Georgiana Darcy, Jane Bennet/Original Male Character(s), Kitty Bennet/Original Male Character(s), Lydia Bennet/George Wickham
Comments: 13
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

Kitty knows what quite days means even if she decided to ignore it. Quiete days means something wrong will happen, some tragedy no one can escapes. 

However she wasn't expecting this. Not this tragedy, not the past coming to hunt them. She doesn't say anything and when someone asks her why she's so pale and why she's trembling and if she wants to sit down because she's stumbling like she's going to faint, she swallows and tries a smile and says that no, she's fine, she can do her work. 

And her work is to stabilize the girl, the young and beautiful girl, who's coding in front of her. And so she does what she has to do and when they takes her to the OR she stays behind even if her body is ready to follow her, to be there and be sure she's alright, even if it's not her job. 

Her job, now, is to inform the family and she's doing just that, she's walking to the waiting room and takes a moment to breath. She's a doctor, it's her job, that girl is one of the patients, nothing more and nothing else. 

But she isn't and the illusion lasts only a few seconds, the time to scan the crowd of people and find his hunting and imploring eyes. He's sitting on the edge of the chair, hands clasped together so they won't tremble, the unnatural white of his face contrasting in a sick way with the drop of blood on his lips where his teeth are biting in a way to relieve all the worries and frustrations. 

Kitty straights her lab coat, her last defense, the last barrier between her and the world. Because that girl is her best friend and she is a doctor and she knows too much not to sink in an abyss of desperation. 

"William" she whispers and he stands up so abruptly she takes a step back. He opens his mouth and then closes it and the repeats the motion a couple of time, trying to find the words for a question he doesn't want to ask. Ignorance is a torment but sometimes knowledge is more. 

"She's in the OR" she starts, hands clenching the labs coat, eyes fix in his. Their full of tears and defeat. The eyes of a failure, of a victim and an assassin, and what the Hell happened, she doesn't realize to have spoken outloud. 

"She... She tried to...". He starts and there is a thought forming itself in Kitty's mind and his eyes, his whole posture, confirms it. 

It's like the air disappears from the room and Kitty shakes her head because it can't be true. But it is. And it's a nightmare. 

"It will be okay". He looks at her with those hunted eyes shining with uncertainty, scared to believe her but needy of some hope. 

"It will be okay" she repeats and her troath is burning with bile but she is the doctor, she is the one who must have it under control, holding it all together. 

She must be lucid and detached even if they're talking about her best friend. 

She's ready to excuse herself and return to her work when she remembers something. "My sisters" Kitty starts, capturing William's attention another time. God,he seems a ghost! "My sisters" she repeats, slowly so she's sure he understands her even in the sea of despair he's drowning in, "will ask me about my day. What should I tell them?". 

"The truth. Tell them the truth". 

She nods and go away with a new weight on her shoulders and on her heart. 

Tell them, he said. Tell Elizabeth, he meant. She inhales and exhales and inhales and exhales slumped against a wall with tears dropping hot and fat from her eyes. In her chest there is a scream she swallow with bile and sobbs. She can't break down like this in the middle of the allway. She can't be affected like this it doesn't matter that the patient is her best friend, she repeats for the millionth time. 

She angrily wipes away the tears, composes herself, and goes to do her work.

*

That evening she runs from the hospital to Jane's where she's sure to find Elizabeth and hopes not to find someone else. 

She finds Michael wich is not ideal but it's better than her parents. 

She tries, she really tries, to be careful, not to scare them but she fails the exact moment her eyes land on her sisters, on her Elizabeth especially. She feels the tears burning her cheeks and she hasn't enough strength to fight them. 

She falls on the chair, Jane immediately by her side, taking her in her arms and Elizabeth firing question after question until Michale tell her to shut up, to let Kitty breath and speak which shouldn't be so difficult, especially the former. 

She takes gulps of air still shaking and crying and for a moment she thinks of Elen, her niece who should be in the other room playing by herself. 

"Kitty, what is it? Something at work or...". 

"It's your patient?". Michael... She forget Michael works with her. "The girl from this morning? If it affects you so much maybe..." 

"What patient?" asks Elizabeth, always pragmatic, always the calm in a crisis. 

"A girl. A beautiful girl who could can't be older than Lidya, I think. Her case doesn't look good, seems she jumps off the balcony". 

Jane has an horrified expression on her face and Elizabeth is paler than before. 

"Do you know her?" she asks Kitty who's still silently crying. Her sister's look makes her nervous and nauseous. 

Two words fall from Kitty's mouth. Two words that makes Elizabeth's world stops only for it to spin again faster and faster. 

"Georgiana Darcy". 

And Elizabeth sees her, a girl of twenty years laying in a hospital bed fighting for her life. Or succombing to oblivion. 

Georgiana and her pale skin and her pale lips and her light eyes. A child, a kid, the little girl infatuated with the wrong man. The woman who crawls herself from the abyss she fel in. 

Fragile and strong. Like crystal, like glass. 

"What?" she asks again because it can't be true, but Kitty's eyes implore her not to pry, to wait, to not make her repeat the story or the name or to speak at all. 

She does it. She waits. She waits until Ellen, her sweet, dear, lovely niece comes demanding someone to play with. She waits until Michael puts on a smile and goes with her playing with dolls or serving fake tea or whatever game Ellen likes to play now. She waits until there are only them and then she asks the question burning on the tip of her tongue. 

"William?". 

A name concealing a story, a world, a universe. 

"He's with her. I was the one who spoke to him. He said.... He said I could talk to you, to the both of you" Kitty clarifies and why she needs to do so it's a question none of the three asks. 

It's obvious, really. 

The silence is comfortable, it gave them time to think, to Kitty and Lizzie especially. Jane is an observer and it's quite alright. She has always been the silent one in the middle of Mary's sentences of wisdom and Elizabeth's opinions and Kitty and Lidya's laughters.

She's watching her sisters, studying them with a knowing eye motherhood brought her with the birth of her daughter. 

Lizzie is still standing, dark eyes lost in a world accesible only to her. Jane can only guess the imagines running between her sister's eyelids: the past, the love, the loss, the hope she's trying to crush under disillusion and reality. 

Kitty has stop crying but she's still shaking, Georgiana's lifeless form imprinted in her mind. Her best friend, so different than her, so quiet and shy and calm. So broken under the pale light of her smile, between the notes of her beloved piano. 

She tries to speak, to find the appropriate words to broke the silence, to bring her sisters back to reality. 

Ellen is faster than her, running trough the door into Kitty's arms. She's her favourite aunt for reasons no one but the kid really understand. But, as Elizabeth whispered one evening, better her than Lidya. 

"Everything's alright?"

"No, Michael. Nothing is alright". The desperation in Elizabeth voice makes them worry she will start crying but they always have a tendency to underestimate her. She straight her back and look him in the eye, silencing all his questions with a single glance. 

"It's going to be okay". Kitty's voice is a broken whisper in the crowd of her niece's blonde curl. 

The words she said earlier to William now are her anchor, the only thing preventing her from going mad. 

*

It's only hours later, after Ellen has gone to bed, after Jane has prepared a dinner she ordered her sisters to eat, after Kitty has really calmed down and Elizabeth has made some calls for work, stopping a minute too much with her finger pressed on William's contact, Michael decides enough is enough. 

"Care to explain what's happening?"he asks to no one in particular. 

Elizabeth is the first to speak." Georgiana Darcy is a dear friend, more a sister, actually" and it's not a lie because it was Georgie's music and smile and pure adoration for her brother that prompt her to look at him in another light. 

"I was engaged with her brother but it didn't end well" and with a glance she makes Michael understand this is not something she wishes to discuss. 

"You love her" 

"I already told you, she was like a sister. She's the same age of Lidya so she's ten years younger than me. She was a child the first time I met her. A sweet, kind and shy girl of fifteen". 

Michael nods and waits. "When William and I broke up we lost contact but to hear she tried to..." 

"Poor kid" Jane whispers. "And poor Will" Kitty adds. "This morning he looks like the world was ending, like his life was crumbling between his fingers..." 

"In a sense it is. Georgiana is the last thing he has left". 

Elizabeth takes her head in her hands.

Too many thoughts are invading her mind, imagines of William, of when they were happy and in love, when they thought the world was theirs to take, before reality and family and duty demanded a price; of Georgiana with her broken heart and her shame and her guilt, her force and her passion and her patience. 

Why? Why has she done a thing like that? Will. If she's so sick with worry she doesn't know how William isn't going mad because she has her sisters but he is alone. 

"Lizzie? Are you okay?" 

"I'm worried, Jane. I'm really worried" 

"I know, my dear". 

Jane hugs her and Elizabeth closes her eyes, enveloped in her warmth, in her love. She's always been her favourite. She has always been there for her. 

"I was just thinking" 

"About William" 

"Yes" she sighs in her shoulder 

"Lizzie..." 

"Don't. Please, Jane, just don't". 

And Jane nods because she meets Kitty's eyes at the other end of the table, imploring her to do as Lizzie says, because Lizzie herself is so distraught to actually plead her, tears in her eyes and broken voice, because William is alone, praying for his sister to wake up, because Georgiana wanted to die and maybe this shouldn't affect them all like this because it's been five years but there is a reason Kitty still calls the girl her best friend and Georgie's sweet and kind and why did she do a thing like that? What happened? 

She doesn't say anything, she simply hugs Elizabeth while Michael does the same with Kitty. She likes him, he's a good man and he's good for her sister. He's handsome, too, with blonde hair and amber kind eyes. He's sure of himself but not arrogant, and he adores Kitty above every other things. He even manage to not be completely disliked by her father, which is an achievement in itself. 

Jane also likes him because he doesn't pry. He's curious, she knows he is, about the whole Lizzie and William Darcy's story but he doesn't push, clearly seeing is not the place or the moment and should Elizabeth ever need to talk to him he will be ready to listen. He's patient and calm, something Kitty has learnt to be only after Lidya's influence has disappeared for a while and even now she's still impulsive and passionate. 

"It will be alright" she whispers and Elizabeth nods against her shoulder. 

She believes it. She really does.


	2. Chapter 2

William looks at her. He's sitting in the uncomfortable hospital chair in a too white hospital room, looking at his sister, who's too similar to a corpse. And it's his fault, like always, because nothing in his life stays, everything shatters in tiny little pieces and he understands how to cherish them, all the things, all the people, only when he lost them. Georgian is the most important person, always been the most important person, since their parents'death and before death and then... 

Then came Elizabeth and happiness and... And he doesn't want to think about that, about their engagement and their missed wedding and that he is still in love with her after five years. 

William sighs, feeling the tears burning and he want so badly to let them fall, but pride is always been his greatest defect, and so he takes Georgiana hand in his and return to ponder the situation. 

Why? Why hadn't he noticed she was so desperate? Why was she so desperate? What happened? 

The last time he saw her, a couple of weeks ago, she seemed fine, she was happy, she was smiling, she played for him, a bright melody matching her bright smile. 

So what changed in the last weeks and why didn't she confided in him? It was something he did? The thought makes he feel nauseous...Could he possibly have done something that affected her enough to...? No! 

Thinking like that won't do any good. 

"Please Georgie" he whispers "Please, wake up". 

The steady rithm of the machine surrounding her bed are his only answer. 

"Please" he repeats, voice cracking with a sobb he failed to contain. He clasps her hand and wishes he doesn't have to do this alone, whisking for someone there to share his pain. He thinks of Kitty, of her tearful eyes, of her words "It will be okay",and hopes they won't be another lie. 

He thinks of Lizzie who, by now, will have to know about his sister and her gesture and he feels jealousy clawing at his heart because she has four sisters while he has only one and maybe he won't have any. 

It's childish and selfish and wrong but everything that helps him not to think about his pain and Georgiana is a welcome distraction.

*

"William". 

She takes a breath, taking in his dishelved appearance. He is pale with deep circle under his eyes, his clothes, usually impeccable, are crumpled and his hands are shaking. 

"Elizabeth". He's one of the few who calls her by her name. For everyone she's Lizzie and it's alright but with him, when he says her full name, it's different. She feels an adult, and not the mischievous child who liked to hide in the most unlikely places. 

"Kitty told me". 

William nods because he expected nothing less the moment she asked what she should answer to eventual questions. 

"I'm sorry" and it's sincere, because Elizabeth loves Georgiana and because she needed to, because of their relationship. She loves her like she was her sister, too, and William will always be grateful for that,because she needed to be accepted, to realize she belonged somewhere. 

"Thanks" he says because is the polite thing to do and because he doesn't know what to do. It's awkward between them like at the beginning, when they hated each other, and he knows she's here for Georgiana, because she's worried, because she cares, but he can't stop a selfish part of him (the one who envied her the night before) to hope she's here for him, too. 

Elizabeth looks at him, at the frailty in his eyes, the desperation, the fear, and she just wants to take it away because he it's wrong, he doesn't need to battle with this, too, not after everything he has been trough. 

But it's not her place, she reminds herself. Altought the reason their marriage was called off wasn't the absence of love, it's not her place. She knows he doesn't have someone else: he wouldn't have to face this situation alone if he does, and in a fairy tale this would be enough. They're not in a fairy-tale and she's late for work. 

"I need to go" she whispers and William nods, throwing the empty cup of coffee in a bin and ready to return at his sister's side. 

"Elizabeth" he calls when she's almost disappeared "thank you. Really". 

"Anytime, Will".

*

Lydia calls her during lunch break and Lizzie knows better than to refuse the call. She isn't really in the mood for pointless chit-chat about whatever new thing Lydia discovered or what amazing man George is. Especially because she knows George is anything but an amazing man and every day she's more convinced her sister, marrying at eighteen and following him to the other end of the world, made a grave error. 

"Lizzie!" Lydia is happy, always, constantly, and when Elizabeth knows this isn't a new thing this time she finds it revolting because she's still thinking about Georgiana, who tried to kill herself, and William who's less real than a ghost. 

"Lydia. What a pleasure" she replies sarcastically. 

"I have great news, sister" and Elizabeth starts to mentally prepare herself because what's a great news for Lydia usually is a mistake for everyone else. 

"We're coming soon for a visit" and this peaks her interest. Lydia doesn't like coming home, she prefers inform her sisters of her successes with a phone call, portraying herself as a grown woman exploring the world. 

"Are you?" 

"Oh yeah! Well, I'm coming. George is already there" 

"What?" 

"Yeah, he has something to do and he should be there from some time, now" 

"We didn't see him,Lyd". 

She can sees her sister shrugging and thinking nothing of it, while Elizabeth's hands start shaking. She has a feeling and altought she learnt not to depend on them, she still take them into consideration. 

Could ha has something to do with Georgiana? She hopes not. 

"And why are you coming?" 

"We have great news, I already told you. Lizzie, you should really pay attention to what others tell you" 

"What news?" 

"Surprise! Now I really need to go. It was a pleasure, Lizzie dear". 

Whickam is here. For some time. And Georgiana is in a hospital bed. 

There is a thought, fighting his way in her mind, that lingers more than acceptable. 

Could be that that man told Georgiana about what happened those years ago? 

Elizabeth shakes her head,because if this is true than they have a really big problem to deal with.


End file.
